Excerpt: Former U.S. president Bill Clinton today declared that ISIS and indeed free market “ideologues” were both opposed to his vision for a more “inclusive capitalism”. Clinton spoke without irony at one of England’s most exclusive venues, the Guildhall, in the City of London — London’s financial district — which governs itself by way of a private corporation....He urged people to take action against free market capitalism, and instead to produce a third way — something he is known for implementing in his political career — marrying corporate interests and government. (Since NAFTA and Clintons, US manufacturing's throat slit and American jobs with it. All part of Globalization. --Barb)

Excerpt: Al Gore declined to back Hillary Clinton for president when asked who he thinks would be next in the White House. When questioned by WPP founder Sir Martin Sorrell at the Cannes Lions festival of creativity about whom he would back for 2016, Gore — Bill Clinton’s vice president from 1993 to 2001 —notably didn’t take the chance to praise Hillary. (Translation: Gore doesn't like or trust Hillary, is waiting to see if sanders or another has a shot. ~Bob)

Bernie Sanders Gains on Hillary Clinton in Bloomberg Early-State Polling. By John McCormick

Excerpt: Bernie Sanders is gaining on Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, with an appeal as an issue-oriented protest vehicle potentially capable of slowing any coronation of the popular front-runner. In simultaneous surveys, the U.S. senator from Vermont received nearly a quarter of support from likely Democratic caucus and primary voters in the states that host the first presidential nomination balloting early next year, cutting sharply into Clinton's still-huge lead. The polls suggest substantive and symbolic support for the socialist, as well as a craving among some Democrats for a Clinton rival to rise.

Hillary Clinton’s dodginess is overpowering her message. By George F. Will

Excerpt: Hillary Clinton’s reticence is drowning out her message, which is that she is the cure for the many ailments that afflict the United States during a second Democratic presidential term. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has called her “the most opaque person you’ll ever meet in your life,” but when opacity yields to the necessity of answering questions, here are a few: Your first leadership adventure was when your husband entrusted you with health-care reform. Using a process as complex as it was secretive, you produced a proposal so implausible that a Democratic-controlled Congress would not even vote on it. Your legislation was one reason that in 1994 Democrats lost control of the House for the first time in 40 years. What did you learn from this futility and repudiation?

Excerpt: There is a Republican Party. The purpose of the party and its politicians, much like that of its Democratic counterpart, is to obtain money and privileges for its major donors. That doesn't mean that its members don't have other ideals and agendas, but Republican politicians who rise high enough come from an urban and suburban establishment that is more liberal than its base. Expecting them to care as much about your issues as you do is unrealistic. They will only do the right thing insofar as it helps them. A. Get control of money. B. Advance their careers. C. Become popular. And this is a good thing. It means that they're controllable. It means that the Democrats are also controllable. And this is how the left took over the Democratic Party. ... Liberals maintain a narrative that their way is the inevitable path of progress. We know the truth. Their way has been tried and it failed a thousand times. The only thing inevitable is their eventual failure. Their systems will always be abusive, dishonest and corrupt. (When I was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in 1972, Defeating a Democrat incumbent by 9 votes in a 4-1 Democrat district, I was fresh out of college, and making $38 a week as a part-time security guard. My dad was a school teacher, my mom a part-time dental assistant. As a senator, my income was the salary, which rose from $12K when I started to $28K when I retired as Republican whip, plus after I rejoined, about $2k a year from the Marine Reserves. When I decided not to seek reelection after five terms, I had the money I had saved from my tax refunds, $5,000 I made selling my two-bedroom, one-bath house, and had to pull my contributions from the Massachusetts retirement fund to buy a house in Tallahassee. as far as I know, nothing I did as a senator made anyone rich. The only "junket" I took in ten years was to the garden spot of Springfield, MA for a hearing for a committee I was on. I guess I just didn't understand how it was done. ~Bob)

Excerpt: Thousands of years after the Roman Empire fell, people are still speculating about how such a powerful empire became too feeble to defend itself. Did it become corrupt? Was its taxes too high? Was it widespread lead poisoning? The refusal to break up tribes it assimilated? Was it the loss of traditional values? Did it over-expand? There are all sorts of theories, but nobody really knows. However, if American falls, historians won’t have to speculate because the problems that are destroying our country are right there for anyone to see. (All these but also the rise of Jihadism, China and Russia. See: The Coming Collapse of the AmericanRepublic

The True Face of Medicare Fraud. A $712 million bust, the biggest in U.S. history, shows that the people most likely to bilk the system are doctors and medical providers, not “welfare queens.” By David A. Graham

Excerpt: Nearly lost Thursday in the response to the atrocity in Charleston was Attorney Loretta Lynch’s announcement of arrests in what she called “the largest criminal healthcare fraud takedown in the history of the Department of Justice.” A total of 243 people were arrested and charged with stealing $712 million from Medicare. The arrests included 46 doctors, nurses, pharmacy owners, and other medical professionals. Facilities billed the federal government for therapy sessions where patients were actually just moved, never treated. In a particularly disturbing case, a Michigan doctor allegedly “prescribed unnecessary narcotics in exchange for patients' identification information, which was used to generate false billings. Patients then became deeply addicted to the prescription narcotics and were bound to the scheme as long as they wanted to keep their access to the drugs.”

Excerpt: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts used to call 'em as he saw 'em -- voting to overturn bad law. But twice with Obamacare, he dreamed of what could be, and asked, 'Why not?' He chose to re-interpret the plain language of the law in order to save it. Scott Ott Thought we're lucky to have a Supreme Court led by a Conservative chief who fixes broken laws so Congress doesn't have to do its job.

Excerpt: The IRS erased backup takes with Lois G. Lerner’s emails even after the messages were subject to a congressional subpoena, but it was an “unbelievable” chain of coincidences rather than a malicious intent to subvert Congress, the tax agency’s inspector general said Thursday. As many as 24,000 emails may have been permanently lost, but the inspector general has managed to recover about 1,000 messages from the tapes because the IRS only “degaussed” the tapes but didn’t destroy them.

Why conservatives might be better at dieting than liberals. By Deborah Netburn, LA Times

Excerpt: In a paper published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers say there is a link between political ideology and the ability to exert self-control. In a series of three studies with more than 300 participants, the authors found that people who identify as conservative perform better on tests of self-control than those who identify as liberal regardless of race, socioeconomic status and gender. They also report that participants' performance on the tests was influenced by how much they believed in the idea of free will, which the researchers define as the belief that a person is largely responsible for his or her own outcomes.

Excerpt: Don’t tell his wife, but Big Brother is headed to the strip club. More than 60 state lawmakers are sponsoring a bill that would increase regulation over adult-oriented clubs, including a registry of strippers, banning alcohol and even creating a buffer zone between dancers and patrons that appears to effectively prohibit lap dances. (I can see criminals, bureaucrats and politicians using the list to target strippers. ~Bob)

Political Offices Are Not Meant to Be Family Heirlooms. By Jim Geraghty, Morning Jolt

Excerpt: Last November, the election of an 18-year-old Republican state delegate in West Virginia was a brief sensation . . . of course, her election seems less stunning when you realize her father is a state senator and was a state delegate for many years. On the Democratic side, Hillary clearly climbed to the top with a lot of help from Bill; Almost every key race for Democrats in the red states in 2014 featured some offspring of a longtime political figure: Jimmy Carter’s grandson Jason Carter running for governor in Georgia, Florida congressional candidate Gwen Graham, Georgia Senate candidate Michelle Nunn, Senator Mark Begich (his father was Alaska’s congressman), Senator Mary Landrieu (her father was mayor of New Orleans), Arkansas senator Mark Pryor . . . then there’s New York governor Andrew Cuomo, California governor Jerry Brown (his father was governor), and the entire Kennedy clan . . . (You’ll recall quite a few folks contended because she had “good genes.” Suddenly there’s widespread belief that ambassadorial skill is contained in DNA strands.)

Excerpt: A congressional investigation into a “Candy Land” physician who allegedly “doped up” and “zombified” veterans has uncovered disturbing new details. The probe has faced stonewalling and hostility from federal agencies, according to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. (See full report at the bottom of this story.) In January 2015, reports surfaced that the then-chief of staff, Dr. David Houlihan, at the VeteransAffairsMedicalCenter in Tomah, Wis., had been nicknamed “Candy Man” by vets and employees for allegedly dispensing drugs like candy. Marine Corps veteran Jason Simcakoski died of “mixed drug toxicity” at the facility on Aug. 30, 2014, with more than a dozen drugs in his system.

Scott Walker Extends the Middle Finger to the Enemies of America. By Leon H. Wolf

Excerpt: And this is a big but. Scott Walker for all his flaws knows how to extend a giant middle finger to the anti-American left and he isn’t the slightest bit shy about doing it. That counts for a lot, not just with me but with a huge portion of the GOP primary electorate who has been begging for someone who could prove that you can win elections and govern effectively while taking on liberal sacred cows at the same time. Scott Walker seems determined to be that guy and so far it is working.

Excerpt: Before we get to John Kerry’s newest “fish in a barrel” punchline, here are a few recent headlines to set it up: ... On Tuesday, at the seventh China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue, Secretary of State Kerry nevertheless lauded China as a partner in progress when it comes to ingenuity:

Excerpt: Our story this morning comes from Union, Missouri, where a homeowner woke up to the sight of Eric M. Frazer standing over him holding the axe that Frazer had just used to break down the door. So, the homeowner put a knife through Mr. Frazer who, subsequently, un-assed the AO. Police found his car in a ditch, took him to the hospital where doctors determined that he was DRT. (Couple of different, confusing accounts linked. ~Bob)

These Two Maps Completely Destroy Everything Liberals Say About Gun Control

Excerpt: Big corporations — the very same corporations we are constantly told are “Right-wing” — have been falling over themselves to erase any hint of Confederate flags from their inventories. Walmart proclaimed, 'We never want to offend anyone with the products that we offer.” eBay said they don’t want to sell anything that promotes “divisiveness.” Amazon quickly followed suit with similar pabulum. As a business proposition, it’s hard for me to fault them. With the mobs desperate to sack any citadel that even hints at being a holdout, best to defenestrate the Confederate flags and fly the white ones. But this standard of no “divisive” products isn’t actually a standard. It is a political fiction, a marketing myth, an invocation one must offer as one shovels the cursed wares of the day down the memory hole, like so many kilos of heroin with cops at the door. (When I was a kid, there was a TV series called, I think, The Gray Ghost, based loosely on Mosby Confederate Raiders. As a Yankee whose great, great grandfather was badly wounded twice fighting the slave power, I always rooted for the union troops, who lost every week. I suppose they can't show reruns now. ~Bob)

Excerpt: So, now that Amazon and eBay — two retailers I frequent online — have adopted the view that they own the moral message of their products, I decided to do a few simple searches for their views on some of the 20th Century’s deadliest regimes — regimes responsible for race- and class-based genocides that claimed the lives of up to 100 million innocent men, women, and children. It turns out that these retailers are happy for you to remember, enjoy, and sometimes proudly display emblems of deadly hate. (Tee shirts with pictures of the ruthless murdering Communist bastard Che Guevara offend me greatly--get them out of stores! “What we affirm is that we must proceed along the path of liberation even if this costs millions of atomic victims.” “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary … These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution!” “We must eliminate all newspapers; we cannot make a revolution with free press.”--Che Guevara)

Excerpt: Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) teared up while speaking from the Senate floor Wednesday about the attack in Charleston. Scott said he spoke with the son of one of the victims who told him, "God cares for His people. God still lives."

Gun Rights Benefited Black Americans During the Civil Rights Movement and Still Do

Excerpt: Advocates of gun rights argue that the best way to prevent such atrocities is for would-be victims to arm themselves; killers will break gun laws without hesitation (though Roof obtained his .45-caliber handgun legally), so legal obstacles to gun ownership only impede the innocent. Relying on the police for defense is futile—or worse. ... As Cobb, a journalist and veteran civil rights activist, explains, for many civil rights activists in the South, nonviolence did not rule out "armed self-defense," which meant keeping firearms. "In these communities, where the law was generally weighted against them, armed self-defense was a natural response to white terror," he writes.

"What is it with the way you Southerners treat black people?" By Steve Arnett

I guess if I learned anything from my father, it was to detest hypocrisy. He worked for Sears, Roebuck, & Co. for 33 years. During that time, he occasionally had to travel to headquarters in Chicago. On one trip in the early '70's, he was accosted by a colleague, who demanded, "What is it with the way you Southerners treat black people?". Without batting an eye, he retorted, "Wasn't it you, who just last Sunday, met with the deacons of your church to decide what to do if black man darkened your door?" As he told it, the man turned white as a sheet, and was tongue-tied. My father was no civil rights advocate, but neither did he teach me to be a racist. He converted from "Hard Shell" Southern Baptist to Catholicism in order to marry my Catholic mother. When he queried his brothers and sisters about their marriage plans, only one objected. She said, "Well, you'll be living in Atlanta, and we live in Birmingham. I guess our children won't see your children very often. I guess that'll be OK". To which my father replied, "Your children will NEVER see my children!". That shocked her into a realization of how that sounded to my father. As long as I can remember, theirs was always a contentious relationship. So, DO NOT throw accusations of racism or prejudice at me, or anyone else, unless you are blameless in the eyes of God. Thanks, Dad.

Excerpt: Good enough. It’s good to know you wish to begin this conversation and I am happy to oblige. Let me begin with this question: Will the Democratic Party finally apologize for supporting slavery, segregation, lynching, and the Ku Klux Klan? Let me recall these lines from some of your party platforms. From your 1840 platform:

Worth reading:Racism is despicable ---and so are those on the Left who continue to milk it for gain, personal and political. By John Kass

Excerpt: That's how we hold our conversations about race in America. We've had them before and we're having one now, mourning the nine poor souls, African-Americans killed in a historic black South Carolina church by a racist white madman. If you scanned the news about the horror in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, you've read about sorrow. You've read about the victims' families, Christians, turning the other cheek to forgive the suspect. But I know you've paid attention, so you've seen something else: The language of factions, of tribes, the use of symbols, code words and assumptions to fix political rivals like insects pinned to a board. Some Southern whites couldn't help but cling to the Stars and Bars, the battle flag of the Confederacy flying on the grounds of the South Carolina Capitol. Many said it wasn't about race, but tradition. They're wrong. It is about race.

You Must Read Gettysburg Film Director Ron Maxwell’s Take on Erasing the Confederate Flag. Today's utopians tread a dangerous path.

Excerpt: Even more shocking, however, is that President Barack Obama, as Maxwell writes, “to his everlasting honor, and in keeping with the tradition of his predecessors, on Memorial Day just two weeks ago sent a wreath to Moses Ezekiel’s monument to the Confederate dead.” Ezekiel, himself a Confederate soldier, went on to become one of America’s preeminent sculptors, where he worked in Rome, to which he had moved. ... If we tear apart our past because contemporary standards have changed, we will lose our understanding of how our democracy has been constantly evolving since the birth of the Republic.

A blueprint for changing the way we talk about race. By Kathleen Parker

Excerpt: I asked Susan Glisson, executive director of the William Winter Institute of Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi. She and Associate Director Charles Tucker gave me a three-hour tutorial in my Washington living room about how people can have the necessary conversation and work toward true reconciliation. First, said Glisson, it can’t be a national conversation. “The best conversations are the most local,” she says. To this end, the institute created a portable template for conversation called “the Welcome Table,” a physical table where up to 25 people of all races sit and talk. Really talk.

Excerpt: This isn’t about the harrowing “Mansion Murders” in Northwest Washington. This is about a quadruple homicide that took place two hours south in Petersburg, Va., on April 19, 2014. This is not about a wealthy white family and their housekeeper. This is about four generations of a black family: Pauline Wilkins, 67; her daughter, Vicki Chavis-Ansar, 46; her granddaughter, Tanique “Missy” Chavis, 22; and her great-grandson, Delvari Chavis, 2. This is about my friend Vicki and her family, whose violent deaths went largely ignored by the media.

Excerpt: Confederate soldiers were Americans, and slavery was an American sin. This is something that Lincoln, a fierce opponent of slavery on principle, was always very clear about. He always said that Southerners were acting just as we would if we were in their circumstances. (Actually, slavery was a world wide sin, still practiced in Muslim countries and approved by the Qur'an. The word slave comes from "Slav" who were the people often enslaved by the Romans and their successors. Before the transportation revolution, most slaves were not Africans but the people near at hand. During the centuries when 500,000 black Africans were brought to North America as slaves, a million white Europeans were kidnapped into slavery in Muslim North Africa. At the battle of Lapanto, the victorious Christian fleet freed 12,000 Christian slaves from the Muslim galleys--but both fleets were power by slave power at the oars. ~Bob)

Excerpt: The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that racist intent is not necessary to prove accusations of racism in housing. The court ruled 5-4 in an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Republican appointee, that the disparate impact doctrine could be applied to the Fair Housing Act. The case rested on whether Texas officials could be found liable for building low income housing in minority-centric areas rather than wealthier suburbs where the population is more likely to be white. Kennedy ruled that plaintiffs could use demographic tests to prove that housing project locations are inherently racist. “[FHA] permits plaintiffs to counteract unconscious prejudices and disguised animus that escape easy classification as disparate treatment,” Kennedy ruled. (We should sue the NBA, the NFL and big league baseball, as their hiring decisions clearly have a disparate impact on Asians, whites, the disabled and seniors. ~Bob)

Louis Farrakhan: ‘We Need to Put the American Flag Down.’ By Oliver Darcy

Excerpt: Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan expressed contempt for the American flag Wednesday, telling hundreds gathered in a D.C. church that it is a symbol of racism and needs to be brought down. The controversial figure spoke at the MetropolitanAMEChurch, just one week after a white male shot and killed nine individuals at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Worth reading: On The Occasion Of President Obama’s Wreath For The Confederate Memorial. By Ron Maxwell

Excerpt: A few weeks ago a group of more than forty college professors and historians sent an open-letter to President Obama asking him to break with tradition, imploring him NOT to send a wreath to this statue on Memorial Day. In no uncertain terms their argument is that we should not honor the twenty year old Moses Ezekiel who fought so bravely at New Market. We should not honor the boy who cared for his wounded roommate in his dying hour. We should not honor the boy who would spend a lifetime of apprenticing and study to master an art which would bring him prominence on the world stage. We should not honor the artist who was visited in his Rome studio by President Theodore Roosevelt as well as the luminaries and artists of Europe. We should not honor the man who is buried at the foot of this monument, nor any of those whose deaths he commemorated in his magnificent work of art. ... President Barack Obama, to his everlasting honor, and in keeping with the tradition of his predecessors, on Memorial Day just two weeks ago sent a wreath to Moses Ezekiel’s monument to the Confederate dead.

Bill O’Reilly Loses It During Explosive Debate: ‘Most Americans Are Not Racist…They’re Not!’

Excerpt: Kirsten Powers and Bill O’Reilly got into an intense shouting match tonight about racism in America. O’Reilly contended that America-haters are trying to demonize the U.S. as a fundamentally racist nation, but Powers had no idea what he was talking about. Powers said that racism may no longer be an epidemic in America, but it’s still an issue. She said, “I’m living in the real world where you can actually defend America and people don’t attack you. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

Excerpt: But behind the solar-energy provider’s allure of celebrity owner Elon Musk (of PayPal, Space X and Tesla Motors) and lightning-speed growth – its construction of a $750-million improbably-named “gigafactory” in New York – is a company trying desperately just to break even. And to catch a break. Disappearing federal grants and tax breaks to green-energy producers – key to SolarCity’s business model – helped push the company into the red last year. Two federal investigations into SolarCity’s business practices could wreak even more financial havoc if stiff financial penalties are imposed. (Renewable Energy is only economically feasible if the taxpayers are forced to kick in. ~Bob)

Excerpt: To supply more energy to more states across the country, the U.S. Department of Energy wants to see wind turbines get a lot bigger. But many bird lovers — the American Bird Conservancy in particular — don’t like the idea, saying taller towers and bigger blades make for a deadly combination. “This expansion, together with larger turbines and larger blades, will mean more birds will die,” said Michael Parr, chief conservation officer at the American Bird Conservancy. “Our position is, if there’s something you can do about it, you should.” (We banned DDT, condemning millions of third world kids to a miserable death from Malaria, for this? I called PETA, but they were out to lunch, enjoying Halal lamb Kabobs at a middle eastern restaurant. ~Bob)

Religion of Peace News

ISIS Responds to SCOTUS Gay Marriage Ruling – by Showing 4 Gays What the Islamic State Thinks of It. By Katie Lapotin

Excerpt: Four gay men were executed by members of the Islamic State following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide Friday. As was reported by a Syrian Twitter user on a tweet posted on the #LoveWins hashtag and picked up by Gateway Pundit, the men were thrown off the roof of a highrise building in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor as a crowd gathered to watch below. Several Islamists also reportedly sent out anti-gay messages on the social networking site using the hashtag #LoveWins. That hashtag was used by many worldwide to celebrate the ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.

Excerpt: Under President Barack Obama, the US has implemented policies toward Iran that are catastrophic for Israel specifically, for US Middle East allies more generally and for US national security itself. Consider, first, the known details of the soon-to-be- concluded nuclear deal. In an article published by The New York Times this week, Prof. Alan Kuperman explained that Obama’s central justification for the agreement – that it will lengthen Iran’s breakout time to the bomb from the current two months to 12 months – is a lie.

Excerpt: Assailants beheaded, bombed and gunned down victims on three continents Friday, killing more than 60 people and raising fears that a global surge of terror strikes could be imminent. There was initially no reason to believe the disparate attacks — at a factory in France, a beach resort in Tunisia and a mosque in Kuwait — were connected. But then the Islamic State asserted responsibility for two of them, first the bombing in Kuwait in which 25 died and later, in a separate statement, the assault on the beach in Tunisia, which killed 39.

AfterTunisia,KuwaitandFrancewe should not be afraid to call evil by its name

Excerpt: He said that a battle was under way for civilisation, one that should unite the great societies and religions of the world – Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism and more – against the vicious death cult that is violent jihadism. ...Evil is within us and it is, apparently, perennial. But we must not be afraid to name it for what it truly is. (The skin color does NOT matter....the blood color is all the same. What DOES matter is the soul. But many hear voices telling them to kill whites, kill blacks, kill Christians, kill Jews, kill Sunni, etc. Such voices are not from God. His commandment is "Thou Shalt Not Kill." Name Evil and recognize it. It will cajole, mislead, rage and scream that you have been wronged and should seek vengeance.... That is Evil. --Barb)

Excerpt: The bodies on the streets of Graz, Austria weren’t even cold before police moved to reassure the public they had only witnessed a random act of violence by a mentally ill killer yesterday, but the attack has all the hallmarks of an emerging form of terror.

Excerpt: Watched over by men and women clutching bananas and the small clickers used to train puppies, dozens of African giant pouched rats shuttle across taped-off alleyways trying to catch the lingering scent of TNT from some of the 1,500 deactivated landmines that have been sown in the red earth. Most scamper back and forth with an apparent mix of delight and concentration, as if they know that each time they find a mine and communicate their discovery with a fit of scratching, they will be rewarded with a click and a mouthful of fruit.

Obama Refuses to Follow Law Cutting Off Aid to PLO. By Daniel Greenfield

Excerpt: These days Obama following the law would be news. Obama not following the law is just business as usual. So this is another case of Obama doing what he can to help terrorists while ignoring the limits on his powers. No wonder he likes the PLO. It too is run by an unelected dictator.

Excerpt: “Dealing with what’s happening requires going back to the root causes, which means tackling the ideology,” said Ghanem Nuseibeh. That is true, but in the U.S., John Kerry, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and everyone else in positions of political power and influence assure us that the ideology that inspires attacks such as these is absolutely benign and doesn’t really inspire these attacks at all. The implications of the fact that the bomber screamed “Allahu akbar” will not be considered — in fact, this small, salient detail was even assumed to be so insignificant, or so embarrassing to moderate Muslims, or both, that it was removed from a later iteration of this Bloomberg story.

Is the Obama Administration Forfeiting IAEA Inspections of Iranian Military Sites? By Yaakov Lappin

Excerpt: The coming days represent a fateful stage in U.S.-led attempts to reach a diplomatic solution with Iran over its nuclear program, and disturbing signs are emerging that the Obama Administration is prepared to relinquish demands by the international community for Iranian transparency. Negotiators from the five permanent United Nations Security Council countries, plus Germany (known as the P5+1 countries) had hoped for a smooth final round of talks leading to a comprehensive agreement. Instead, they find themselves facing a firm Iranian refusal to allow international inspectors to visit military installations in Iran where suspected work had been carried out on a military nuclear weapons program.

A very bad day, Friday, with consequences. --Del

ISIS just recently pushed followers to "rush and go to make Ramadan a month of disasters for the infidels” and on Friday there were three different terrorist attacks in different parts of the world, bloody massacres of people on a beach or elsewhere at a mosque or at a factory in France. The Tunisian President made a passionate speech about the atrocity, the second time foreign tourists have been slaughtered there, and a terrible stain on the country and deep threat to its badly needed tourist industry. How can they guarantee anyone's safety there now? How can they or anyone else anywhere else now say that ISIS and other jihadists are just a limited problem? How is any Westerner, any non-Muslim, now going to manage to avoid any thoughts about the danger of this kind of spreading mental sickness, how do we not wonder just what is being preached at the local mosque, how do we not wonder about the chances of more young Muslim men sliding into radicalism and starting to fantasize about bombs at public events, or a free for all massacre at a mall somewhere? But the media and politicians and activists want us all to worry nonstop about crazy Right Wing, Nazi-loving, Stars and Bars flag flying Americans as the big threat to our society. As if there are huge numbers of such people in some kind of "movement", when clearly there are not? And the priority we're all supposed to jump on is somehow repealing the 2nd Amendment, that is the true critical flaw of our whole society? Sorry, somehow I am not buying into any of this. And in fact, after 20 years of letting my carry permit lapse, I will be undertaking the background check and course of study required by my state for me to qualify for a carry permit again. I don't plan to carry very often, when I had a permit for nearly 20 years I very seldom went anywhere with a loaded pistol and I probably will act the same way again. But I want to be able to go armed if for any reason I think there's a reason to do so. And if something bad happens in public, I will say that probably I'm the kind of person you'd want nearby with a weapon.

Excerpt: Iran's supreme leader has hardened his stance on the nuclear negotiations with world powers, with the deadline for a comprehensive agreement only days away. In a speech on Tuesday night, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insisted Iran would only dismantle its nuclear infrastructure if economic sanctions were lifted first.

Obama administration will now communicate with jihad groups holding hostages. By Robert Spencer, JihadWatch.org

Excerpt: This will, of course, encourage more hostage-taking. At a time when European governments have funneled tens of millions of dollars in ransoms to jihad groups, essentially financing their operations, that is hardly wise.

Coming Here: Police knew grooming gangs were targeting Birmingham schools five years ago but did not alert public

Excerpt: West Midlands Police knew five years ago that Asian grooming gangs were targeting children outside schools across the city - but failed to make the threat public. Documents obtained by the Birmingham Mail show the force were aware pupils were at risk of child sexual exploitation (CSE) back in 2010. The confidential report, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act, also shows police were worried about community tensions if the abuse from predominantly Pakistani grooming gangs was made public. (Better little girls should be gang raped than your cop career ended by a charge of Islamophobia. ~Bob)